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Ive seen the idea put forth that there is no need for the West to exploit underdeveloped countries. These countries so the arguement goes, should be encouraged to join us in the west. How do they do that? Well obviously they consume more and trade more. Everyones happy...

Well according to this article China agree and are planning to quadruple their GDP. Does anyone seriously still think the world could sustain a global capitalist economy? What happens when India follow suit?

Its economy is growing at a staggering rate and its people are beginning to enjoy a better diet as well as a taste of western-style consumerism. But the head of the UN's environment programme has warned that China's growth - and ambitious plans for the future - are unsustainable.

Klaus Toepfer warned that so-called developed countries will be forced to tighten their belts under China's plan to expand its economy fourfold within the next 20 years.

Take the Chinese government's attempts to get its people to eat more healthily. Beijing has been aiming to encourage every Chinese person to eat 200 eggs a year - a total of 260billion eggs.

To produce that many eggs, a flock of 1.3 billion chickens is needed.

To keep the chickens fed, a grain crop bigger than that produced by Australia is necessary.

The Chinese are also developing a taste for seafood. Should they begin eating fish at the same rate as the Japanese, they would consume the world's entire catch.

Beer is also becoming more popular. But to provide each Chinese person with just three extra beers a year, as much grain as Norway produces annually would be needed.

No wonder Mr Toepfer sounded worried when he addressed young environmentalists in Sydney this week.

"Quadrupling the GDP of a country of 1.3 billion - can you imagine?" he asked them.

He considered the example not of chickens, fish or beer but cars. The number of cars on China's roads rose by almost 40% last year. The country's flagship car manufacturer, First Automotive Works, aims to increase its output fivefold in the next five to eight years.

The Institute of Petroleum believes the demand for oil will rise in China by 500% in the next 25 years. Mr Toepfer pointed out that if China had the same density of private cars as Germany it would have to produce 650 million vehicles. There is simply not enough metal and oil in the world to sustain such numbers.

"It's not a question of whether you are devoted to nature or whether this is an emotional topic. This is the rationality of economics," Mr Toepfer said.

He said China's plans could only come to fruition if developed nations radically changed their consumption habits.

China's growth in the past 10 years has been phenomenal.

While many still live in poverty, a sharply increasing minority can now afford the cars, electronics goods and imported delicacies that used to be seen as luxuries.

According to the Worldwatch Institute, China has already overtaken the US, which uses a third of the planet's natural resources, as the leading consumer of meat, fertiliser, steel and coal.

The adage used to be "all the tea in China". In the future, it may just be "all the chickens" or "all the cars".

Well id say we definitely will have to limit our consumption and I can see the capitalists burying their heads in the sand. Where hopefully they will suffocate (joke!) leaving the rest of us to build a sustainable and peaceful world.

"The problem is that we may have to realise this before demand exceeds supply and look for alternatives prior to that happening."

thank you. thank you. thank you. at least someone on these boards is making sense.

I've read that our oil resources will be over halfway depleted by 2030. After that, the cost of oil will never go down. Considering that you need energy to do just about anything, this will make everything more expensive.

Of course, there is supposed to be enough mineable hydrogen on the moon to last us thousands of years... but NASA is still busy with that useless space station.

Of course, if we research enough stuff about sub-sub-atomics, we could discover an infinite source of subnuclear energy... But the oil tycoons shut the superconducting supercollider down, so I guess we'll never know.

There is an estimated 4 billion tons of uranium dissolved in the oceans. This is enough to satisfy all the world's energy needs for millions of years. The price is too high right now because oil is currently cheaper, but that will change when the oil becomes scarce.

And radiation from the sun delivers up to 800 watts per square meter, which means that the total energy needs could be forever satisfied by a 10 million square km array of solar cells (about the area of USA or China), assuming 100% conversion efficiency. But that is probably too expensive.

Controlled hydrogen fusion is slowly getting closer, but we're not there yet.

Who knows what sub-nuclear technology will bring. We haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to ordinary nuclear technology.

Its great that all these alternatives are available to us but I dont think its so great to suck every last drop of oil out of the earth before we seriously turn our attention to these other technologies.

I think Buckminster Fuller mentioned that real widespread technological change only really happens when people are forced by necessity to change. Bucky was designing more efficient houses 30 years ago and we still haven't caught up with him (we all seem to be obsessed still with gigantic inefficient resource wasting dwellings).

China are also aiming to have a base on the moon by 2010 I think (could be a bit later though), if they can kick-start the migration of industry into space (the X-Prize is heling too), they could trigger another industrial revolution.

--------------------The above is an extract from my fictional novel, "The random postings of Edame".

In the beginning was the word. And man could not handle the word, and the hearing of the word, and he asked God to take away his ears so that he might live in peace without having to hear words which might upset his equinamity or corrupt the unblemished purity of his conscience.

And God, hearing this desperate plea from His creation, wrinkled His mighty brow for a moment and then leaned down toward man, beckoning that he should come close so as to hear all that was about to be revealed to him.

"Fuck you," He whispered, and frowned upon the pathetic supplicant before retreating to His heavens.

Yeah, but you still need to get resources up there somehow,,,,i think it would be good to build a craft in space that wouldn't launch on earth...it'd be expensive to take it up in sections, but you could make it like a mobil station or something..